Godzilla Easter Eggs Reference Mothra, Naval History And Breaking Bad

Hollywood used to specialize in blockbusters. Nowadays, the industry’s trying to specialize in franchises. It’s not enough to deliver a singular, entertaining, standalone film. Movies like The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and X-Men: Days of Future Past now have to exist to set up the next film (or series of films). And it’s not just comic-book movies that are guilty of this practice. Almost every major motion picture makes bold steps to build larger worlds, from YA adaptations like The Hunger Games and Divergent to our current box-office leader, Godzilla.

Gareth Edwards’ rebirth of Godzilla didn’t hammer fans over the heads with obvious foreshadowing. Instead, he laid clever, small Easter Eggs all over his Godzilla feature film… even though most of them were "blink-and-you-missed-them" quick. Now that the movie has been playing for almost two weeks, fans have been able to revisit Godzilla and scour its backgrounds for clues about possible directions the already announced Godzilla 2 could go. What have they seen?

Redacted Credits Hide a 'Breaking Bad' Joke

Because, to its credit, Godzilla wants to work as a standalone film, Gareth Edwards didn’t overpower his visuals with Easter Eggs that will reference future happenings in sequels that he didn’t yet know were going to happen or not. But he did make callbacks to the numerous Godzilla movies that came before him. Fans have had a lot of fun pointing out battle moves from this film’s third act that were lifted from classic Godzilla movies of the past. I’ve even seen sites analyze the chunks that are taken out of building in Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla, claiming that they mirror bits of destruction in past movies.

But the best bits of Godzilla history likely can be found in this film’s opening credits, which cleverly use redacted military reports to fill in the extensive history of the character, and from these bits, we can acquire some useful (and some truly bizarre) trivia. BadassDigest gets credit for running the fully transcribed opening credits for Godzilla, which reveal:

- The "Bikini Islands" are mentioned, a nod to the nuclear testing of Operation Crossroads, which we will discuss in depth in our third point.

- The "monsters" typically emerge from the Pacific Ocean, with some specimen dating as far back as 4 million years.

- When Bryan Cranston’s name is listed in the credits, there’s a reference to a "Walter Malcolm" arguing about government men in white lab coats keeping dirty secrets. This is what Cranston’s character does in the movie, but his name on screen is Joe Ford. I’ve searched for this reference, but only keep coming back to Cranston’s two most famous roles on Breaking Bad (where he played Walter White) and Malcolm in the Middle. Is that Walter Malcolm? Am I missing something, Godzilla experts?

- The redacted facts go WAY back, saying that there are "many references to living dinosaurs in the Bible," and that "there are countless other passages that refer to ‘dragons’ as well."

- Finally, there’s a line in the redacted credits that makes me laugh. When costume designer Sharen Davis is listed, the redacted credits claim, "Are these animals real? Can we prove they even exist or are they merely men in rubber suits with … tricksters." That’s a great nod to the old methods of bringing Godzilla to life on screen. Clearly, we’ve come a long way since then.